Webinar

In a joint industry session, our project partners John Deere and Agricolus discussed innovation and sustainability in agricultural primary production. The industry session was complemented by presentations from two academic researchers from outside the programme.

The Webinar on Food System Innovation was held on May 27, 2019. It was a pleasure seeing so many interested and motivated students attending this event, despite it being during the early evening hours. The webinar included four different presentations, held by partners within the EFSET programme, as well as external guest speakers. We would like to express our gratitude towards our speakers for taking the time for participating in our event and providing meaningful insights into their research topics. The topics covered included innovation and technology in agricultural primary production, using intelligent, remotely controlled machinery and precision agriculture, behavioral processes involved in adopting and taking up innovative practices, as well as energy production in conflict areas on the case of Gaza.

When taking a systemic view on food production and security, it becomes clear that implementing isolated solutions cannot answer complex, wicked problems. This is largely attributed to the inter-connectedness and co-dependence of food systems and adjacent sectors like energy production, politics, sociology, agriculture, the digital world, etc. Technological innovations are an important tool to foster and bring forth new opportunities for increasing efficiency, minimizing resource-use and waste or harnessing opportunities for exploiting new processes and products. However, the adoption of technology and innovative practice cannot be regarded self-evident and identical across different regions in the world, but rely on a number of different factors such as culture, tradition, availability of resources (accessibility of land, money, labor, energy supply). One can conclude that food system innovations comes in different ways, shapes and forms and is not exclusively limited to technological, but also non-technological, such as organizational and social innovation.